Science
quadrangle, ca. 1984. Construction of the John Crerar Library
and the Samuel Kersten, Jr., Physics Teaching Center led to the
landscaping of a new two-acre quadrangle on the west side of Ellis
Avenue. Photograph copyright 1984 by Joseph Sterling.

Hanna
H. Gray and Charles M. Gray at the 426th convocation, June 1992.

Hanna
Holborn Gray

1930-
Recognition of Gray's administrative
acumen led to her being named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
at Northwestern University in 1972, one of many appointments she was to
hold as the first woman in a position. While the press frequently mentioned
these "firsts," in the academic world her work came to be recognized in
its own right.

Gray's reputation as an administrator
was enhanced at Yale during the period of budget cutting which many universities
encountered in the late 1970s. While at Yale, she was provost and professor
of history from 1974 to 1978, and she served as acting president for 14
months after Kingman Brewster left in 1977.

Returning to the University
of Chicago in 1978 in a similar atmosphere of deficits and retrenchment,
with balancing the budget one of her first tasks, Gray worked to strengthen
the University's historical commitment to scholarship. The problems to
be faced were real: erosion of material resources, inflation, changing
demographic trends, shifting policies and attitudes of external sources
of support, and narrowing opportunities for young scholars. But the greatest
danger, she said in her inaugural address, "would be to engage in an apparently
principled descent to decent mediocrity."

In the next few years she
embarked on an ambitious building program, with equally ambitious plans
to raise funds to support it. West of Ellis Avenue a new science quadrangle
was constructed which included the John Crerar Library, incorporating
the merged collections of the Crerar with the University's science holdings,
and the Kersten Physics Teaching Center. The Bernard Mitchell Hospital
and Arthur Rubloff Intensive Care Tower essentially replaced the 50-year-old
Billings Hospital facilities for acute care. Several older buildings were
renovated, while new facilities were constructed for the Law School library
and Court Theatre.